How to Practice

Practice every single day! Schedule a time – maybe after school, or when you wake up. Your sessions don’t have to be long. When you first start, they may only be five minutes long.

Break the music up, set goals, and don’t stray from those goals. Your goal may be to learn four measures a day. Focus hard on just those measures!

Practice slowly!!! Focus first on playing everything correctly, including the notes, fingerings, and rhythms, even if the tempo has to be really slow. Do your best to play everything correctly the first time!

Use a metronome. Once you can play things right at a steady pace, use a metronome and gradually increase the tempo to help measure how much you’re improving. You can also use this to set goals, for example “I’m going to learn measures 12 through 16 and be able to play it at 120 beats per minute.”

Practice every day. Yes, every day. Not five days a week, or every other day, but every single day. The number one reason people quit their instrument is simply because they don’t practice, and this is often just due to failing to make it habitual.

However, it’s not just about willpower. Some people may sit with their instrument for hours and feel they aren’t making progress. It’s not for a lack of trying, but often just a lack of focus. Practicing well includes setting a consistent schedule, deciding what you want to learn, and then practicing with intent.

The most important thing you can do is to practice frequently. It’s about the consistency of the practice sessions, not the length. So don’t feel like you need to set aside hours of time each day. Literally 5 minutes a day of practice is great for starting out. Even the busiest person has five minutes they can set aside each day.

It is helpful to schedule a consistent time to practice each day, for example, when you get home from school or work, or when you wake up in the morning. If you keep a calendar, adding practice time to your calendar is also a powerful psychological tool.

Now that you’ve sat down to practice, the question is: what next? Many musicians practice aimlessly, playing a few notes and then calling it a day. Don’t get overwhelmed and follow these steps to make sure you have a clear goal in mind and are practicing with intent!1. Break the music into smaller sections. Don’t waste time just playing the whole song over and over again! Split the music up. For example, decide to learn two measures a day, and then just focus on the two measures you need to learn. Don’t waste time moving on from there, or practicing stuff you already know. Just focus on getting the small section right!2. Play the music slowly and focus on accuracy. (AKA, the Accuracy Method) Every time you play something, your brain is remembering it. So if you play something wrong, your brain remembers that, and you then have to play it right several times to “reset” what your brain has already learned! The first few times you play some music, go slow. Go slow enough where you can play all the right notes, using all of the right fingerings, and keeping the rhythms relatively in tact. In this way, your first few times playing something are spent doing it right and you develop the correct muscle memory.3. Use a metronome to measure your practice. (AKA, the Metronome Method) Once you can comfortably play the music at a steady pace, begin using a metronome. Set the metronome to the slowest tempo necessary for you to play everything correctly. Play through the music, and if you do so perfectly three times in a row, increase the BPM by four. Repeat until you reach the desired tempo. Better yet: be able to play it at a faster tempo than necessary so things feel even easier when you slow it all down! NOTE: Don’t start below 65 BPM. If it’s still too hard to play it at that speed, go back to practicing with the Accuracy Method until you’re ready.4. Move on to the next section. By now you have set a goal, for example, “I will be able to play every section at 120 BPM,” and accomplished that for a section of music. Now just move on to the next section! Once you’ve perfected the next section, trying playing both back-to-back. Repeat this process and you’ll have the whole piece of music learned in no time!

Research shows that it takes someone, on average, 66 days to form a habit, but it could take some over 200 days. The point is to make sure you practice every single day, even if just for a few minutes, to help develop the habit of playing music every day. It will eventually become second nature, and you won’t be able to imagine a day going by without playing something. As you practice more, playing music moves from something that “has to be done” to being genuinely enjoyable and fulfilling, and it all starts with just a few focused minutes a day.

Pro Tip: Power HabitsIf you feel super motivated, try setting up two practice sessions a day, one in the morning, and one in the evening. Doing this will help you develop the habit of practicing twice as fast. Remember: the sessions don’t have to be long, they just have to be frequent. Do this, and hear your playing abilities soar in no time at all!